Primary school pupils stage a Bowes Museum take over

IN a coup de tête of historic proportions, a band of primary school pupils seized control of The Bowes Museum.
Armed with smartphones, some of the children from Montalbo Primary School, in Barnard Castle, hijacked the museum’s Twitter and Facebook accounts, took up position at the front desk and even gained access to the treasury to count out donations placed in the Swan box. The revolt, on Friday, November 18, formed part of a national “Takeover Day” hosted by museums across the country.
The event sees children  take on the rolls of museum staff. Groups of children were involved in packing and unpacking ceramics, creating social media posts to highlight activities at the museum and helping the marketing department produce a poster to be used on the museum’s website. Others created a mock model of an exhibition, stocked shelves, counted money and labelled books in the archive.
Children at the front desk also had the responsibility of sorting the museum’s post and handing out leaflets.